How Long Is Too Long to Spend Writing One Essay?

On the art of time + patience (my least favorite word)

At 31, she weeps in the shower of her new home, collapsing on the floor as the water washes over her, playing every graphic scene she saw last night on the evening news, gripping her new husband’s hand as they watched the world shut down. High risk. Quarantine. Isolate. Death. One day, alone in her big empty house, she starts writing an essay about funerals. It will take her years to understand why she spent so long fixating on these funerals.

For my 35th birthday, I wrote those words in this subscribers-only post with other intimate reflections on the first half of my 30s guarded behind a paywall.

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In my essay collection that will be published in early 2025, there’s an essay about funerals that I’ve spent almost five years writing. And, no, that doesn’t mean I’ve worked on this essay for 1,825 days.

For several years, this essay sat untouched in a stack of loose papers buried in a drawer. We renovated our house and it’s a wonder the essay didn’t get lost in the shuffle. Yes, yes, I have an electronic copy, but it’s not the same as the mile-high stack of crumpled drafts, covered in markings from my time on the phone with my aunt. (If you missed the introduction to my amazing aunt who is a world-class editor, read this one.) Cut this, add this. This isn’t working, this is beautiful. More here, say less.

Here’s the original title of the essay when I first moved from my journal to a blank Word document back in 2020: “The Funerals I Remember.”

I wrote about all of the funerals that lived in my mind. As I worked through each experience and scene on the page, I started detailing exactly what I was wearing. And thanks to that expert editing I mentioned (here are 7 things a great editor will do for the quality of your work), the “final” piece is now called “What to Wear to Funerals” and it’s written in second person (which I never saw coming).

Even today, I cry every time I re-read this essay. Of course, the subject matter is heavy, but also, I get emotional at how far my writing has grown and everything that I learned as a person as I let this piece take on so many different shapes over the years.

It’s almost unrecognizable from my (shitty) first draft.

Nearly ten editors have given feedback on this essay over the years. I took big risks in my writing, and honestly, not all of them worked. Some of the feedback included, “I really don’t understand what’s happening right here.” So I went back to the page, I dialed it back, I sharpened my writing.

I revisited this essay after becoming a mother, and what happened on the page took my own breath away. Life and death take on an entirely new meaning when you’re a parent.

And you’ll notice I called it my “final” piece, which is exactly what I mean. This essay never truly feels finished. None of my work does. We could all keep tweaking and editing for our entire lives, waiting to feel complete and aching to feel whole. Waiting to dust our hands together, thinking, This is it! I have arrived.

I’m in a pretty exhilarating and daunting stage of the publishing process right now where I’m shipping off my “final” work and waiting for endorsements from authors and editors who have agreed to give it a read. Recently, Erin Loechner, author of Chasing Slow and The Opt-Out Family, sent a glowing review of my book (!!) along with some lovely words of encouragement: “As my husband wisely told me: A book is never finished. It's just published!”

So there it is: we’re never truly finished.

The work lives on. Our lives live on. I could spend 5, 10, 15 more years writing this one essay, and it might never truly feel done. But it’s time. It’s time to share it and give it new life in the hands of my readers.

There’s no right answer to how long is too long to spend working on anything. There’s an (obnoxious) tea bag that reads, “Patience pays.” I’ve always hated it for it’s stark truth.

But, alas, the tea bag wins. Steep on, we must.